Dr. Adam Link, founder of Fireweed Capital, argues that founders should concentrate investments in areas of deep knowledge rather than diversify blindly. He manages "wipeout risk" by ensuring portfolio performance doesn't track his own business, and caps his practice at Dunbar's number, around 150 clients.
Chapters
Ah! Startups get da party— startups geet tha paaarty staarted...
Whaaa?!
Startupskittha paartiy startupsgiet tha partystaarded you want tekkin tacos? Tacos n' techs—you know we got it ayeeh!!! Startupskittha pawty startuupss gieett thapar tay started. Huh!? Startupsguetthapaorti startsuptgieteepahrtistarteeth yew wanna tekkin tacos, taacooos nd tehks, yaaww no wii ahht iiighayyyeeh!! Ayyyeeeiiihhhhh!
And welcome back to the Tacos and Tech podcast. I'm your host Neal Bloom, and I'm thrilled to have on here Dr. Adam Link, founder of Fireweed Capital. Hey Adam, thanks for being on with us.
Thank you. Yeah, great to be here.
It's good to spend some time here together. I'm excited to talk tech, capital, and where they're converging. That's for sure. Why don't you give us a quick high-level overview? What's Fireweed Capital?
Yeah, so Fireweed Capital is my financial planning firm. We were founded about 3 years ago now, and I basically built Fireweed Capital out of my own journey. Between finance and tech. So I started out in finance out of college, was in the financial services industry, really didn't feel like it was the place for me to be. I felt like an imposter as a, you know, college student with very little money, a lot of debt, and I'm, you know, trying to advise rich people on what to do with their money. And that didn't really feel right. And I've always had a passion for tech. So I actually ended up working with a friend of mine on a startup company. I was the backend programmer, he did the Android application, and we ended up actually getting acquired. And so I then moved into tech full-time, and I spent about, gosh, over a decade in tech, anywhere from a programmer to engineering manager to senior engineering manager. In multiple industries, including crypto. And along the way, found that I was the person that people would come to for finance questions, you know, whether it was personal finance or business finance. And finally, a couple years ago, I thought, you know, I do all these talks with my team and I tell them about, you know, how to invest and all that. I should get paid for this. And so I went and I got my investment advisory license, which is what you have to do in the US in order to get paid. And then I launched Fireweed Capital, which is really, like I said, my response to— I've always been talking about finance and tech with people, and now I get to get paid to talk about finance with tech people. So it's kind of like the perfect blend of both sides of my life.
I love it. I can relate as well, going from the tech side to the funder side. Often founders are asking me, you know, for financial management advice because they're going through an exit or they're having, you know, they're having to decide on this next round of funding. Should I take a secondary? And it's like, look, I get it that we have a trust relationship here, but I am not the one to give you financial advice. I can tell you, you know, what I did in your shoes as a founder. So I can relate, you know, and being the one there. But I think probably what you saw is like you saw a pain worth solving. Which is what, that's what entrepreneurship is all about. Can you unwrap the layer a little bit on like just your areas of background? You know, because I think you worked specifically at the intersection or kind of an incubation of new ideas. You kind of saw how new ideas would actually get incubated and launched. Take us through a little bit more of the background of like the building side that you experienced.
Yeah, that's on the tech side. Yes, we can certainly talk about this, but I think, Neal, you and I both have a shared background in working with a company called Science. I actually worked for Science out of Santa Monica. I think they're in Los Angeles proper now, but they were out of Santa Monica when I worked for them. So that was actually a lot of my startup experience was working with some of the top angel and VC funders in that kind of, at that time, Silicon Beach. So this is, you know, Snapchat was just down the road and, you know, we had Science and a lot of startup folks, you know, over a decade ago in the Los Angeles area. And I got to know a lot of them. So, you know, constantly going to meetups and learning about new businesses that were launching. And really through the time that I had at Science, understood what it took to take an idea to a prototype and then throw marketing dollars behind it to try to figure out, is this actually a viable business? And really used that a number of times in my own career. You know, obviously our first acquisition at Science, and then after that, starting and selling actually two other companies outside of that, where we basically used some of the Science model of like, is there a need here? Can we find an audience? Can we market to it? And that, you know, worked out incredibly well. And that actually led me into the crypto space. I was employee number 1 at a company in the crypto space, very early on in the crypto space. This is back when Jamie Dimon was still calling Bitcoin a fraud, which if you're listening to this today, he has not only now changed his tune, but JP Morgan is a very large supporter of crypto. I, you know, it's kind of fun to be like, hey, I was there before you. Yeah. And then that basically ultimately led to joining Coinbase, which is where I was the last 6 years of my tech career, pre-IPO at Coinbase, all the way through the IPO. So it was an incredible journey of kind of having been at multiple startups, startups of 1 person, startups of 3 people, all the way to startups of a couple hundred, to Coinbase, where it was really a startup of a few thousand to an enterprise by the time I left of, you know, multiple thousands of people.
But I think the biggest trend through all that is, you know, sitting in a place that is designing the future, right? To a certain regard. I mean, that's early stage startups. You have to half live in the future, half live in the now, get the stuff done that creates the future we are dreaming and actually making it happen, which I think are a lot of dots to connect there. How do you see like your role now in financial planning and wealth management around that? You know, like you're helping people create, you know, their future as well. Like take us through kind of that arc of kind of a big switch from tech building to future building.
Yeah. So I became a parent about 4 years ago, and this has actually heavily influenced my, my view of how I think about investing. As an engineer, you know you never test in prod, right? Like, that's like rule number 0, right? Don't test in prod. Rule number 1 is don't take down prod, right? And as an engineer, you also know you can never only test in dev. Like, certain things you have to test in prod. As much as you don't want to, you have to test in prod. And when I became a parent, it hit me that raising my kids, there is no dev environment. There is no sandbox environment for raising children, right? Every decision you're making, you're testing in prod. And you're testing in pride on a very long feedback cycle, right? So like usually as a software engineer, I'm used to being like, okay, we're gonna run the suite of tests, push it to dev, open up a browser, double check that it works, push it to prod. I can do that in a span of 30 minutes, right? Super agile development. But with a kid, you tell 'em something, then you kind of have to wait 18 years to figure out if that was good advice. And when you think about the same thing in finance, Neal Bloom: Right? You don't get to test in dev when it comes to your finances because ultimately, as you start making these investment decisions, every day that you stay invested in a certain stock allocation is a day that you will never get back. Right? And so you can say, okay, well, I'll test in paper money. I'll test that, right? But like, you are actually invested, even if you're testing in paper money, your actual portfolio is sitting there invested in something else. And so as time moves forward, you don't know if you've done the right thing until you get to the point at which you need your money. And for some people, that's retirement. For some people, that's early retirement. And even then, if you do an early retirement, you hit fat FIRE and you're going to retire, well, that's great. 30 years down the road, who's to say that that portfolio is still going to support you? And so there's a lot of parallels I've found with when I think about wealth, how we do agile development to software developers, right? Because like, yeah, you're testing in prod, you're testing with a long cycle. And so how do you start to de-risk and gather data about your investing to make sure you're on the right track before you get there and it's too late?
Interesting. Okay, so take me through when the realization happened Obviously it was being a dad for sure, but say when did you actually start taking action on it? Because the entrepreneur always starts tinkering, then building, then rips the bandaid. I want to hear that arc. Like when, when did you know it was time to go all in? Yeah. Yep.
So you're right. The tinkering phase was me doing my own money. Right. You know, I, I'm a strong believer of like the, the reason I actually, I started going back into financial advising again was I had enough stories. I had seen things. I started seeing things 2, 3 times and you're like, okay, I'm starting to draw patterns here. You get pattern recognition. That's what makes a really good software developer. It makes a really good financial advisor is having that pattern recognition to say, okay, I've seen how this goes. It may be different this time, but I've seen the pattern. So I started doing my own money first and that gave me a whole host of stories where I can start talking to software engineers and other tech professionals and say, well, I did this. It may not be the outcome you get, but here's my story, right? And then I started helping other tech folks, right? And then I started hearing similar stories. I started seeing same portfolio setups. I started seeing similar problems contributing to retirement or thinking about the way to financial independence. And that was really when I started realizing like, okay, I'm talking to people about how to do 401s, how to save, how to, you know, think about financial planning, even to the point of like running some financial planning software. And I was like, I, I gotta get paid for this. Let's take my nights and weekends. And that was really where I said, okay, well, I'm, I'm gonna go do my own, you know, financial advising firm. And, you know, like every good entrepreneur, I went and I registered the LLC. And at that point it was born, right? Well, at least legally, legally it was born at that point. So, you know, I wouldn't necessarily call it ripping the bandaid off. The thing about financial advising that's very similar to being an entrepreneur is, you know, you don't really have anything until you make a sale, right? And so like as a financial advisor with zero clients, you're not really a financial advisor, you're kind of a guy who's trying to get clients. And so, you know, as you grow the first few years in any business, right, you kind of continually explore who your clients are and how you're going to work as a business. And, you know, certainly some businesses you can jump in with both feet and you have no exit other than the business has got to work. And other businesses, you know, something like financial advising, you know, you, there is not necessarily a day where you say, this is the day I rip the bandaid off, right? You kind of ease into it and all of a sudden you wake up one day and you're like, oh my gosh, all I'm doing is financial advising today. Like, I guess, I guess I'm here. I guess I've arrived, right? So yeah, that's that, at least in my experience, but that's what it's been like. It hasn't really been like I woke up one day and was like, I'm a financial advisor today.
But like you said, your sandbox is you, which is pretty great. Uh, and I think that's what you mentioned it as well, like right out of college you're talking to people who are near retirement, they're like, you're not— you can't relate to my life at all. And you felt the same, you couldn't relate to that at all. Right? Uh, you want to take advice from someone who's either been there, done that before, or is going through it, right? As opposed to, hey, I read this book and I'm qualified to talk to you about this thing. So that's, I think that's unique and a breath of fresh air, right? From an advisor who's giving advice and really guidance, right? Uh, is that how it feels? Does that feel like you're kind of trusted because you were doing it as well?
Yeah, you know, I think it is one of those things that like in hindsight you look at it and you're like, yeah, that totally makes sense. Like, you know, I needed my own stories to be a good advisor. I look at it as like, as a software engineer, like I just needed data, right? Like we're all about data-driven decisions, right? And so you run through the process yourself, you get the data, now you know what you've done right, what you've done wrong, right? And so I guess to me it was a no-brainer that like, of course you'd have to have a financial advisor that would've done it before you, you know, like that's like a software engineer saying the program works without testing it. Like you just don't do that, you know? So, you know, yeah, but yeah, I guess, you know, maybe that is the case in, you know, many cases financial advisors are not necessarily having gone through the experience themselves. And that is something that I feel strongly about I'm going to go put my money on the line first. So like I didn't talk about real estate investing until I had done it and I invested in real estate and I do venture capital investing. I do private equity investing and I've got the stories, good and bad, but like I've done it. So when you want to talk about being a VC, it's like awesome. Let's go talk about being a VC because it is not at all what you think it's going to be, but it's also pretty cool.
Right. But I think your experiences of, you know, at the edge of consumer science, at the edge of a whole financial overhaul, Coinbase, also relate to this. Like, what are you doing uniquely from a, uh, you know, uh, from a management service and bringing people new ideas and innovation around that? Like, are you getting pulled being where people are saying, hey, show me uniqueness? Or are you pulling people into unique and innovative areas to invest in?
Yeah. So I think a lot of it is on, well, I will say on the crypto side, a lot of it is people coming to me with ideas, right? And I will just say that, you know, I've been in crypto for like 9 years and honestly the space has changed so much over the course of a decade and it's grown so large that like, I just, I can't keep track of all the cutting edge crypto stuff anymore. You know, as a, I'm the person who's also doing financial planning for all my clients. Right. And so that, that is a place where I have clients bringing me ideas. And conversely, then, you know, if you are deep into the crypto space, you start to understand a lot more about the US economy than most average people. Um, and so I can kind of bring the traditional finance side to them. And that's where I found a lot of times what I'm doing for my clients is not necessarily always saying like, hey, here's the next hot stock, right? Like that, that's not how we work. But what we're trying to do is say, okay, you want your money to do this. You need your money at this time period to do this goal. And here's where you said you're comfortable taking risk. Now let's go take a look at what you're actually doing. Go to the actual ground truth of your portfolio and say, is this lining up? Basically, is there product market fit between what your investment portfolio is and what you're saying you want it for? Right. And so a lot of my job is basically going through and saying, okay, less here's a cool investment idea and more here is the single-threaded story of your finances and where are the places that don't make sense and highlighting that to people and saying, okay, you know, here's a discrepancy. Like, do you care? Do you want to do something about that? Do you want me to do something about that? Do you want to do that now? Right. It's like a series of questions, right? And the answer might be like, yeah, it's a discrepancy and I don't care. Cool, man. Just wanted to let you know. Right. And other times it's like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize that I had like this massive risk I wasn't thinking about. Or I, you know, didn't realize I was invested in this thing and it works like that. Right. It's like, oh my gosh, I didn't know that. It's like, well, yeah, it's what I do. I do the finance side, right? Like you can go tell me all about the cool new stuff that's happening in, in the edge of, you know, edge of tech. Right.
So on that, the holy grail of portfolio management is diversification. Is this the— are we telling founders ever the opposite? Like diversification is actually maybe what you don't, you shouldn't do and you should go deep into what you know and what you actually can manage and physically touch?
Yes, great question. Okay. So there's a number of schools of thought around diversification. And the first one I will say is every financial advisor will tell you that diversification is the only way to invest. You want to be as diversified as you can be, run a diverse portfolio. Frankly, I think that's BS. I don't think a diverse portfolio is at all what you should be doing. And I will say, I think I have Warren Buffett on my side on this one, though everyone claims Warren Buffett on their side for everything they say. But essentially, the idea goes like this, and this is something I actually got from venture capital, if you look at really good VCs, they invest in what they know. And not only do they invest in what they know, they then double down on what they know and they become an industry expert in an area. So let's talk as a founder, what do you want to do when it comes to diversification? Because your investment portfolio is not the limit of your investments. As a founder, you are investing in your company, right? You're investing in your investment portfolio, And then you're probably investing elsewhere in other businesses and other ventures that maybe it's money, maybe it's time. And so when you think about investing in an area that you're starting up a business, that is one industry, that is your major wealth, it is your income. That is not diversified at all. And it shouldn't be because you're not trying to avoid losses. You're trying to maximize your gains. And so concentration is how you make wealth. Now, when you look at your overall portfolio, there's two schools of thought. One is you go risk-on and you say, I'm going to invest only in stuff that I know. And most of the time that is adjacent to the industry that you're starting a business in. The difficulty with that is you are now tying your entire worth to a single industry. Let's say you are in a defense startup You know defense really well. If you start investing in defense stocks, you are now all in on defense, right? And so that's risky, but it's also an area that you probably know the best. Now, if you want to outsource your portfolio management, what you're going to hear is, well, you should diversify. And the answer there is basically, okay, if you're going to diversify your portfolio, what you're really thinking of doing is having a portfolio of money there if your business doesn't work. Now, does your portfolio itself need to be in a bunch of different stocks? No. Your portfolio just has to not crash at the same time that your business crashes, right? So let's say you know defense really well and you know like retail products like the back of your hand, right? Like something like Liquid Death,, right? Like a huge consumer, direct-to-consumer brand, right? Maybe you invest all in direct-to-consumer brands in your portfolio. You're not diversified, but you're also not correlated to your underlying business. Right. And so, so like that, that's how I think about it, by the way, which is if your business goes down, you want to have your portfolio left. And so just make sure your portfolio isn't one-to-one correlated with your business. Uh, that's— I love that.
Especially for a founder who's big on betting on themselves, taking the risk, but also knows where, you know, a little bit of their limits are. So follow up to that, like, where is the line between conviction and stupidity, right? Like, how do you know when you're playing too far outside your knowledge base?
Yeah, look at wipeout risk. And there's actually a thing you can read up on wipeout risk, but essentially one of the ideas behind being wealthy and staying wealthy is don't take risks that wipe out your entire portfolio and everything you've built. So if you're going to go risk a million bucks, and for many founders, risking a million dollars is not hard. A lot of times your business that you're building is worth over a million dollars as you start actually gaining traction. So you are risking a million bucks. But at the same time, if you look at your portfolio, you can take a wild risk in your portfolio as long as the downside is not going to dramatically wipe out that portfolio. And that, by the way, is angel investing, right? Like, you take massive risk in angel investing. You could hit a home run, you could not hit a home run. Um, typical angel portfolio, you know, one investment carries the entire fund. Every other investment is going to lose money, right? And so, like, that is an example of the extreme version of covering wipeout risk that, you know, 99 investments out of 100 are going to fail. And all, all you need is that one, but that one has to return such a high amount of money to cover all the other 99. So similarly, like when, when you're looking at your portfolio, if you're putting yourself in a situation like that where you're going, okay, any of these could lose, most of them probably will. One of them has to carry the day. I'd say at that point you've crossed the line into what I would say is probably unwise investing because that level of risk requires an insane amount of management to ensure that the one actually does work. So if you're going to take a risk with angel investing and you don't have the time to swoop in and either inject capital or your network to save that investment, don't take wipeout risk with that portion of your portfolio.
Yeah, yeah, it's got to be like the furthest, tiniest part of any money that you have if it's related to that. But like you said, you got to have some also some dry powder to continue to play in that for sure. Uh, and as an angel, one thing I find with angel investing, founders right after an exit, you know, get a little angel investor happy and deploy a bunch into like some friends But then they sit back and stop and they're like, well, I'm just going to wait for those to turn back. And it's like, you do remember it took you 10+ years to have— like, you either need to continue to deploy and build an angel portfolio so that the power law catches up, right? So that you actually do find 1 in 10, uh, or you're not playing a portfolio mentality in angel investing and you're just— it's just fun. You know, it's just like what we call founder charity. You know, I'm just giving the money away to my friends to empower them to have the life that I had previously. So is that similar? You take that view?
Oh, it is. It is such a thing. And I'm so glad you brought up that founders do this because quite literally, I mean, I did that, right? Like you, you go from no money to a bunch of money on that exit and you're like, Oh my gosh, I can finally do the other side of the table. And as a founder, what's the other side of the table? It's the angel investors, right? So like, we all want to be on that side of the table because my gosh, the term sheets we got screwed us to the wall, right? And you want to be the guy on the other side of the table because we all know that's where, like, that's where you make a ton of money, right? Like Peter Thiel made a ton of money. Like all these great angels made money after being founders. And yeah, you're totally right. Unless you're going to do it professionally, like, dude, you're going to have a little angel portfolio. It's going to look cool. If you do it on AngelList, you're going to log in every now and then. You're going to see that all the values are locked. Nothing's changing. And in 10 years, you might get a check for a little bit more money than you put in. And congratulations, you played angel, right? Right. Exactly. But yeah, but that is way different than being an actual professional angel investor. Right. Yeah.
It ends up becoming like a new passion project and you're like, okay, I'm going to— this is the— this is my new hobby now. You know, some people it's cars, some people it's, you know, something else. But I think that's what we find is angel investing, at least the ones also, by the way, that the founders want to take money from. Right. They want someone who's been there, done that before as well, too, but also is engaged and like you can call me like, hey, I'm having this problem, can you help me? Right? So it's not a write a check and never talk again for 10 years. Like you don't make, that doesn't make a great angel investor to the founder that you funded as well. Um, so the other part these days, AI has completely democratized a lot of stuff, whether it's building tech for yourself or, or helping new founders start companies really easily or using it to manage your own wealth. So obviously you're using these tools every day for yourself personally and your business. Are you seeing your customers doing it as well and coming to you and sharing notes on kind of like financial building?
Yes. So one thing I will say about AI and wealth management, you've heard the old adage of like, you know, double check what AI says, AI makes mistakes and all that, right? Like it's literally like above all the Google search results and all that fun stuff. And Literally, I'm looking at Claude on my screen right here. It says that, you know, AI can make mistakes, please double-check responses. So, you know, as a professional financial planner, I have a bunch of training. And so like, I have like little things that I see and I read and I'm like, hmm, that seems a little odd, right? So I was talking with Claude probably a couple weeks ago about doing a Roth conversion. And for those of you who don't know, basically a Roth conversion is you take money that wasn't taxed yet in your retirement account and you move it over to what's called a Roth account. So you pay taxes on it today and then you let it grow. And there's a number of reasons why you would want to do that. And I have to talk about that, but basically I was talking about a Roth conversion and Claude gave me this answer of like, oh, well, like it doesn't matter when you would do it at all because the answers are the same. Like they're both equivalent scenarios. And I was like, really? That's interesting. I was like, did you remember to pay taxes? And Claude was like, oh no, you're totally right. You have to pay taxes when you convert. And I was like, okay, literally, dude, you just like, you forgot about a 37% tax bill. Right? So like 100%, this strategy made sense and it's equivalent. And I was like, yeah, exactly. Except for you didn't pay the government. So like, it's, it's little things like that, right? Where like AI is really good at programming. It's really good at code. It's really good at deterministic things. But when you start throwing in either some of the non-determinism in finance or just the complexity of the overall system, that's where I've seen AI start to get tripped up. Right? So that's my word of warning right now, where we are today at this recording, right in June 2026, AI still makes those mistakes around some of that. The other thing that AI doesn't do well is the non-deterministic nature of wealth management. And what I mean by that is if you're trying to do a novel concept or like a novel tax claiming strategy or something like that, what it boils down to in many cases is counterparties have to agree with you. So let's use the case of taking some sort of— wretch thing with the tax code. Ultimately, the IRS has to agree with you that you are interpreting the tax code correctly, and that involves lawyers. And lawyers are basically just running a conversation with another human to try to convince them of their viewpoint, and that determines the truth. And AI struggles with that level of non-deterministic truth because it needs to know what truth is based on what humans have decided to give you an answer that works. And when the answer is, it depends on the outcome of a court case or depends on the IRS giving you a letter, AI really struggles with that, right? So again, like there, there are limits to what AI can do today in the wealth management space. Outside of that, when it comes to starting companies, when it comes to, you know, helping you as a one-person run a company as if you had 10 employees. I love it. I, Claude and I, like Claude is the other half of my business, right? I've written a lot of my own software. I use Claude for a lot of just the rote tasks of like, I've tied together 6 or 7 systems with APIs and it's like, Claude, just do this. Like go check my email, figure this out, update this record, just do it, you know?
I love that claim from a, from a software engineer who, a, who the AI narrative right now is AI is going to take all the white-collar jobs, is like, no, no, actually it's actually going to show how important some of these human roles are. Uh, and you are living proof of that, being able to take the tech AI build meets human advisor and give you like real intelligence, uh, around that. Is that Do you think many others agree in that, or others are hoping that it is that and still waiting to determine it?
Yeah, I think you'll see a lot of the basic concepts can be taken over by AI and explained quickly. But I don't think necessarily that all white-collar jobs are doomed. There is still an area for specialists. There's still an area for expertise. And I think that what we're going to see is the era of generalists, low-skilled generalists in white collar jobs is going to probably go away. But, you know, much like medicine, you know, when you look at the long arc of medicine thousands of years ago, it was, we'll go call the doctor, right? And now it's like, we'll go call the doctor. What doctor? What part of your body do you have a problem with? Right? You got a problem with your nose, go call an ENT, right? You got a, a problem needs to be solved immediately, go find an emergency doctor., right? And like they've specialized, medicine's been around for thousands of years and now you have subspecialties inside of subspecialties. And I think you're gonna see a similar thing where it's like, you know, I, I do programming. Okay, great. What type of programming? Right? Like you have to have a new archetype that we're thinking about. Yeah.
And, and I think AI definitely can't take away taste, right? And you have a certain taste for the kinds of founders that you like to work with and the kinds of advice that you know how to give them because of your entire learned experience as well, right? Like there's just, you cannot feed decades of context and taste into an AI to replace that as well. Uh, and so do you think you see yourself kind of narrowing even more of the kinds of people you end up working with, uh, as this goes forward?
Neal Bloom: Yeah, I, I think one of the things that most people don't know about financial services is financial advisors basically build a practice around them, and there is a cap to the number of relationships a human can have that are still meaningful, and that cap is about 150. So for many financial advising practices, you usually limit it to about 100 to 150 client relationships. Right. And that's just, it's just a human mental thing that our brains just can't forge close connections, which means if I don't know you well enough, I can't give you good advice. It's personalized.
It's like Dunbar's Law, right? Is 150. I mean, it's like, yep. Yeah.
Yep. That's exactly right. Yeah. But yeah, I couldn't think of Dunbar. I was like, I know there's a name. I know there's a name. Yeah. Dunbar's Law. Yeah. It's 150. And so what I think you'll see, and this is actually something I plan on doing as well, is like, When I get to about 100 people, you either got to find somebody who's leaving or I'm full. And most people don't realize that about financial services is a lot of the really good advisors, you come to them and you're like, I'd like to invest with you. And they're like, cool, I don't need you. And I don't have room in my practice. And you're like, oh, I'm sorry, but I have money. And they're like, yeah, that's great. Go find somebody else. I'm full. And I think you're gonna see a lot more of that probably with, you know, service businesses where it's like, that's great, I'm glad you got money, but I'm full up. I plan on doing that when I get, you know, when I get my 100 people, sorry, I'm full. There's a waiting list, you know, because I want to be able to give good advice.
I love that kind of the reinvention of small business to a certain regard or just the service practice that is a human practice. As much as probably there's someone out there, there's probably a dozen people who'd be like, we can expand that by 10x with AI. And now it's a 1,500-person Dunbar's Law. And I think I love this theory that it won't be. And that isn't the case, that AI will not break certain laws, human social laws. For the founder that could be looking for you, probably reaching out, and it's always reactionary, we know that, just had an exit. Just about to have an exit or just deployed a bunch of capital and be like, ah, how do I manage this? What advice can you give someone who's about to reactionary reach out to you and be like, I just did this thing? Yes.
Well, whatever you did in the past, you did what made sense to you with the information you had. And so I think one of the things as Founders, you know, it's okay to be wrong, right? Like, remember, like, good startups are built on fail fast, and your wealth is the same way. That, like, if you're going to be wrong, fail fast and then course correct, right? Knowing that whatever you did, you did with the best information you had at the time. Now, my job is to give you better information, better insights, and better ways of thinking about it if I think there's a mistake in the way you've done something right. And so there's a lot of education very quickly. You know, when people reach out, it's like, okay, well, here's what we got to fix and we got to fix immediately, right? And many times, especially if you're coming up on a sale, like whether it's me or someone else, reach out to a financial advisor if you're going to come up on a sale, because there is some very specific stuff that we need to take a look at with the way your business is structured to ensure that you are paying the least amount in taxes you can. Right? We all got to pay taxes and we all got to pay what my friend calls the poor tax, which is when you become rich, there are a lot of strategies that are not available to you the first time you get rich that are available the second exit. But, you know, you got to pay the poor tax. We're going to try to minimize the poor tax you pay so we can get you through to the side where you're wealthy, you know, and then you can go into exit number 2. The first one is luck. The second one is skill.
Right. And we know builders always build. They're not going to stop. That's what we love about building is that, you know, you may today think you're done, but man, the tools are just even getting more enticing to say, oh, I got another one in me, which is— which we love about founders. Never done and always something to go build and solve, which I know is exactly what you're doing with your own practice as well too. The other part we know with everyone is that tacos solve all problems as well. It's pretty much the universal food that we know will always be great. Uh, where do you go? Where do you break bread? Where do you, where do you find that taco shell?
Yes. Um, so luckily you asked me this a little bit before we started recording, so I did have a chance to look up and make sure this is still open. Um, so I live in northern Minnesota now. And there is a city near me called Duluth, Minnesota. They have a local shop called Burrito Union. And if you ever find your way to Duluth, Minnesota, we have a, we have a tech scene actually, so maybe you'll find your way up here. Yeah. Um, but Burrito Union has really good tacos and burritos. It's literally in their name. And also drinks. Um, and the coolest thing about where they are located In Duluth, Duluth has the Superior Hiking Trail that runs through it, and the Superior Hiking Trail goes all the way north along Lake Superior. Um, and so if you want to kill two birds with one stone, you can go hiking. As you hike through Duluth, you can grab a great taco, head north out in the wilderness. Okay, I love it.
Burrito Union Tequila Bar too, sounds like they also got the agave, uh, as well. So love that, uh, you're not— still not Even though you had your SoCal roots at some point, you're still not too far from, from some good Mexican food. And, and that's great because that's what powers us every day for sure. Adam, this has been great. I really enjoyed our conversation together. I so much appreciate you being on the other side now, helping founders from areas that you've learned and from the tools that you're building. So thank you. Thanks for the time and thanks for what you're doing.
Yeah, thank you very much for having me on. And you're right, builders always build, and this is my way of building now, right? Like, I'm building a practice and helping other people build. This— gotta pay it forward, man. That's what it's all about.
And this is a pain worth solving, 100%. We know it. We've firsthand knowledge that it— right? Like, so, oh yeah, thanks for what you're doing.
Thank you. Fold the body origami. We be surfing Coronado, eating tacos El Gordo. The tacos standing puesto, lucha libre en sombrero. Gotta shout out to Coast Angels by the ocean, watch the sunset. La Jolla shores, entrepreneurs trying to get funded when San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer. Oceanside to Tijuana, SD be full of hustlers from couch surfing to Penthouses right on the beach. Tech leaders who believe stars are within reach. We interviewin' founders who be shootin' for the moon. #SDTacos with your host Neal Bloom. Startups get the party, startups get the party started. Startups get the party, startups get the party started. Startups get the party, startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos? Tacos Tech— you know we got it! Aye! Startups get the party started, startups get the party started... You want tech n tacos? Tacos 'n' Tech—you know we got it! Hey! Taco Bell hey! Startup Party startin', startup skit da pah-ty, startup skit tha pahty staarted!
Ya wanna tek an ta-cos? Ta-coz n' Tek—you kno-whee gawd-it!
Ay!
